About 9 million people in the United States are covered by both Medicare and Medicaid, including low-income seniors and younger people with disabilities. These dual eligible beneficiaries have complex and often costly health care needs, and have been the focus of many recent initiatives and proposals to improve the coordination of their care aimed at both raising the quality of their care while reducing its costs. This page highlights some key resources examining the dual eligible population and provides you with the standard search result page for a site-wide search on the dual eligible tag.

Featured Dual Eligible Resources

This map shows the current status of the state demonstration proposals to integrate care and align financing for beneficiaries eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid. Over 9.6 million seniors and younger people with significant disabilities are dually eligible for both programs, and as many as 2 million of them may be included in the demonstrations.

In a few short weeks, Medicare will undergo big changes that will have a major impact on nearly 4 million African American seniors and younger people with permanent disabilities who rely on Medicare for their health coverage. More than four in ten African Americans with Medicare lack coverage for their…

Medicare Drug Benefit Enrollment UpdateThis enrollment update breaks down and explains the statistics related to enrollment under the new Medicare drug benefit and the separate low-income subsidy program that provides additional assistance. The enrollment update summarizes the latest enrollment figures released by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and…

Tracking Prescription Drug Coverage Under Medicare: Five Ways to Look at the New Enrollment NumbersThis new analysis, which assesses Medicare drug benefit enrollment statistics released Feb. 22 by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, examines five different approaches to understanding the Medicare drug coverage numbers:What share of the…

This fact sheet provides a basic overview of the Medicare program, including how it is financed, who is eligible, and what benefits are covered under the program. In addition, it describes supplemental health insurance, out-of-pocket spending by people on Medicare, and data on Medicare expenditures and financing.

In 2006, low-income individuals receiving health coverage through both the Medicaid and Medicare programs, “dual eligibles,” experienced a change in their prescription drug benefit when their Medicaid prescription coverage was replaced by the Medicare prescription drug program known as Medicare Part D. This study provides information on the ongoing successes…

This issue brief analyzes linked Medicare and Medicaid data to examine dual eligibles’ utilization and spending in both programs in 2007. As a group, dual eligibles are costly—with per capita Medicare and Medicaid spending over four times Medicare spending for other beneficiaries. However, a small share of dual eligibles account…

This issue brief describes the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ plan to evaluate the financial alignment demonstrations, for beneficiaries dually eligible for Medicare and Medicaid via its contract with RTI International.

This tutorial was produced for kaiserEDU.org, a Kaiser Family Foundation website that ceased production in September 2013. The kaiserEDU.org tutorials are no longer being updated but have been made available on kff.org due to demand by professors who are using the tutorials in class assignments. You may search for other tutorials to…

Amid increasing state and national interest in using managed care delivery models for Medicaid beneficiaries, the Kaiser Family Foundation’s Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured (KCMU) hosted a public briefing on Tuesday, June 25, 2013 to provide information on recent transitions from fee-for-service to managed care, and to discuss their…

This brief examines the role of Medicare and Medicaid in the lives of dually eligible beneficiaries – low-income seniors and younger adults with disabilities who are eligible for both programs – through personal profiles. It includes a glossary of eligibility and service delivery system terms and state-level enrollment and expenditure data for dual eligibles.